On vets holiday, candidates ponder Iraq strategy

By Tim Gaynor

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Monday said the United States should stay the course in Iraq even though he was "sick at heart" at mistakes made in the six-year conflict.

As he sought to distance himself from President George W. Bush and his handling of the unpopular Iraq war, McCain's two Democratic challengers repeated calls for a quick exit.

"As we all know, the American people have grown sick and tired of the war in Iraq," McCain told hundreds of veterans and their families gathered for a ceremony honoring U.S. service members killed in conflicts.

Meanwhile Democratic front-runner Barack Obama and his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton used Memorial Day speeches to reiterate pledges to end the war.

"My intention is to bring this war in Iraq to a close, and to start bringing our troops home in an orderly fashion," Obama said at a veterans event in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a battleground state where both parties see a good chance of winning in the November general election.

Campaigning in Puerto Rico, Clinton spoke to the parents of an Army soldier who faces a redeployment to Iraq in coming months.

"I hope that if he makes a career in the Army, that when I am president, we will begin ending the war and you won't have to worry about him going back," Clinton said in Bayamon.

Later at a rally in Ponce, Clinton pledged to "bring our troops home."

The speed of drawing down the 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is a central issue in the November U.S. presidential election.

U.S. troop strength in Iraq is due to fall to around 140,000 by July. Obama, who has opposed the war, and Clinton have pledged to begin bringing U.S. troops home right away.

But McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent 5 1/2 years in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp, on Monday warned that it would be "a mistake of colossal historical proportions" for U.S. troops to walk away before Iraq's new government gains its footing.

In a rebuke of Bush, McCain said U.S. voters should give General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, time to carry out a "counterinsurgency strategy that we should have been following from the beginning."

McCain has said he believed the Iraq war can be won by 2013, leaving a functioning democracy there and allowing most U.S. troops to come home.

McCain did not explicitly mention Obama on Monday after attacking him in last week for his lack of military service.

In his speech on Monday, Obama mentioned that his grandfather served with legendary U.S. General George Patton in World War Two. But Obama admitted that "I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you."